Then-Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office approved paying $20,000 in 2023 to a confidential human source for information in the controversial FBI investigation code-named Arctic Frost that probed efforts by President Donald Trump and his followers to contest the 2020 election results, according to documents obtained by Just the News.
The revelation is included in a tranche of new memos that FBI Director Kash Patel turned over to Congress this week that provide more clarity on the tactics and scope of the inquiry that agents and prosecutors used to try to build a case that Trump, his lawyers and allies had violated the law by attempting to offer the Senate alternate electors ahead of the certification of the 2020 election results that put Joe Biden into office.Â
The records reveal multiple efforts by FBI supervisors to make Trump himself a “subject” of the probe, an idea that was ultimately rejected, their reliance on information in liberal media outlets to build the case as well as the sheer magnitude of major Trump figures whose phone or email records were exploited by the FBI for possible evidence of wrongdoing.
The new revelations include that the FBI obtained email records from nearly 150 figures in Trump world and that they analyzed phone data, not just on nine allies of Trump in Congress, but also on his lawyers and some of his outside advisers, like prominent TV host Steve Bannon.
Bannon’s name was included in a list of at least 16 Trump associates whose long-distance phone call records were analyzed by the FBI for evidence that also included Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien, personal lawyers Sidney Powell, Jenne Ellis and Cleta Mitchell and the late former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who led a team of investigators probing irregularities in the 2020 election.
One memo also showed that in addition to Trump’s and Vice President Mike Pence’s personal cell phones, which Just the News previously reported were obtained, the FBI also analyzed the phone calls from “more than 50 White House-issued cell phones.”
But the biggest bombshell in the latest document was the revelation that the FBI had an informant that Smith’s office approved for compensation for the dirt he or she shared with the FBI.
An electronic communication “documents prosecutorial approval, in the form of emailed concurrence from Counselor to the Special Counsel Raymond Hulser on 06/02/2023, of a payment for information in the amount of $20,000.00 to [name redacted] for information provided in support of captioned investigation,” one memo reads.
“The payment was discussed by Raymond Hulser and Assistant Special Counsel Julia Gegenheimer with Special Counsel Jack Smith,” the memo added.
The memos showed the chain of approval with an FBI agent who wrote to Smith’s office on June 2, 2023.
“As discussed, request your office’s concurrence in our proposed payment of $20,000 for CHS’ provision of information in support of the investigation,” the agent wrote.
Hulser wrote back succinctly, “Concur, thank you.”
You can read some of the memos here:
There have long been rumors of an informant that the FBI used to build the Arctic Frost case, and the new memos are certain to spur intrigue as to the person’s identity and whether they were a Trump insider.
Arctic Forst has generated controversy because it secured an order from U.S. District Judge Boasberg that let the executive branch, in the form of Smith’s office, obtain the phone records of eight U.S. senators and one congressman and swept up information from hundreds of conservative figures and groups.
At least two of the members of Congress — South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham and Tennessee GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn — have vowed to sue the DOJ for piercing their congressional privilege and privacy protected by the separation of powers clause of the U.S. Constitution. And other Republican lawmakers have raised concerns that the probe swept up too much information too broadly without regard for the Fourth Amendment, essentially resembling a fishing expedition instead of a targeted probe.
